We heard to our consternations the numerous cogs thrown at the wheel of the 2023 presidential elections and all attempts to truncate the smooth birth of the next government in Nigeria. The screams to the headlines about some dark forces in both the seat of power and outsider hang-on, with other alloy garbs who had made it their business to determine who becomes what in the emerging democratic dispensation.

Governor El-Rufai earlier echoed and amplified the threat, uplifted to a national limelight with a consequential impact.

The unraveling scenarios were daunting and huge with fears, risk and uncertainty about the reality of a successful elections for the 2023 election cycle.

Nigerians would recall when the then presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu came out boldly with a bolt of a now assimilated mantra -Emi lo kan – it is my turn to be president of Nigeria. It was a war cry against elements of progress and the anti- democracy forces in the presidential villa when the former president Muhammadu Buhari held sway.

President Tinubu came out to reveal the diabolical hands of detractors who had conspired to ensure he did not emerge the candidate of his party, the APC, thereby not clinch the position of the office of the president. He fired a shot of warning back at conspirators and that he was determined ready and bound to be the next president and commander-in-chief of the republic.

Next out of the blues came the ugly head of artificial fuel shortage prior to the date of the elections, with the last straw being the introduction of new Naira currency notes. Right in the middle of and heat of electioneering.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu made it clear and loud to whoever and all that cared to listen that the election would be, take place as planned and that victory for him was assured at the polls. That irrespective of the evil machinations against the smooth run of the presidential elections with the attendant shenanigans. He would coast to victory, triumphantly.

You may want to ponder upon why the preceding phenomenon would have to occur in the middle of a general election. However, it happened, and – the election came and went- without the wish and plans of confusion of an orchestrated disoriented electorate and disorderliness in the process.

The apostles of ill winds knew and counted on the fact of the history of discord and bad sportsmanship in the anal of elections in Nigeria. They expected and hinged the next stage in the plan to scuttle the Nigerian democracy at all times through the election tribunals. Going to the tribunal at every turn of events was to not seek redress, rather to prevent democracy from thriving in the country and stop the winner from the gain of a successful outcome of the exercise and ensure it is they and no one else. To continue to manipulate the system to their advantage and put the average citizen in a perpetual state of miseries poverty and hopelessness.

And now, with yet again recurrent practice of the vagabonds playing out at the presidential election tribunals, where their charades and unpatriotic acts would be displayed to bemuse distabilize a docile people.

A senator Adamu Balkachuwa dropped supposed a bombshell – he turned around desperately to refute dispel and wish away and as it appears unsuccessfully bound for the trash bin – about how his retired wife of the federal court of appeal had been influenced severally by his colleagues in election matters that affected some of them.

The revelation took the country by surprise and a storm that shook her to the foundation. And of course, the senator tried very hard to walk back his deliberate loose togue or shall we say senility at bay.

People with discerning minds were unfaced though and could see through the same playbook of the untouchable high and mighty of the country who would rather have Nigerians under their jackboots, permanently.

IT WAS A CHEAP SHOT AT THE SITTING TRIBUNAL CURRENTLY IN PLACE CONSTITUTED TO ADJUDICATE THE ELECTION PETITIONS OF THE 2023 PRESIDENTIAL EXERCISE.

It is an orchestrated scheme at prejudice to shape clothe and colour the outcome of the rulings and pronouncements of the election petition tribunal. It was no accident, neither was it a Freudian slip as the country was being made to believe. Rather, a make-believe.

This was meant to portray the tribunal – an extension of the judiciary – in bad light and corrupt, with nothing good to come out of it. Condemned and preparing Nigerians to not expect a judicious result from its stable.

Senator Adamu Balkachuwa and company in the fifth column having failed to stop the elections through several pains strewn along its path decided to reach back to their backup or plan “B” and other risk factors that might still exist in their pouch to be unleashed upon the psyche of Nigerians.

People who knew Nigeria well, who are up to date with the antics of a few bad elements and their influence on the polity already anticipated where they are headed and how to curtail the menace with perennial excesses of.

This too will pass like all their other crazy ideas did. uneventful unsuccessful and unimpactful. dead on arrival and back to sender is common saying in Nigeria.

Democracy has come to stay in Nigeria and although there would always be the fifth columnists until they either fizzle away or their power whittles down.

Nigerians are wiser and refuse to buy the unsolicited confessions of an arrowhead of some evil minds.

Nigeria will survive!

Michael Shokunbi.